“This year’s first prize for scoring the highest marks in class 4 goes to SK!”

Behind the scenes…

[SG frantically fidgets with buttons of a remote]

“Gosh! SK’s getting that prize and these darned buttons! They’d to stop functioning just now! [Sigh] I should’ve stuck with the regular remote with warranty, not this cheap Chinese-made thing! Just wait you cheaters, I’ll teach you a lesson!”

Be careful about what you wish! The area under the curve-thing means if you get the first rank now, you might not get a good PG seat. Still worse, you get a good PG seat, but a sinister guide, still still worse, you get all you ever wanted and still want more… 😛

First, you’ll have to be broadminded enough to not feel offended at this post. Basically, it’s a joke, and do keep in mind, I’m an atheist.

God is under mistaken belief that SK gets the second rank only because of his generosity.

Deism (in reference to ‘Deist God’) is the belief that God only created the Universe and the laws of nature, and left it at that, and that does not actively interfere in the daily affairs of the World, including answering people’s prayers. So according to Deists, praying to God does not make any difference.

So in this case, the God feels lazy and decides to stop interfering with the Universe after an argument with SK.

But a few days later when he realizes that because of his noninterference, SK was going to get the prize for securing the first rank, his ego gets hurt, so he gets alarmed and tries to interfere with the school function. But then his remote doesn’t work because it is inferior-quality Chinese-made one. 🙂

I think you must have understood the rest. But if not, you can ask me what you didn’t understand.

If on the ‘y’ axis you plot ‘speed’ and on ‘x’ axis if you plot time, then the area under the graph that you’ll get will give you the product of the two (i.e., speed an time), which would be the distance covered in this case. So basically, God’s trying to tell the kid, that over one’s lifetime, everyone on-an-average gets the same things in life–sometimes happy things happen, sometimes sad. And that’s why SK suggests that he be given first and third ranks (average=2) rather than second rank twice (again, average=2). The concept is just like this: you can reach a place by traveling fast and then slow in as much time as traveling at an intermediate speed constantly.

Ohh…now I get it. Well, I think God shouldn’t interrupt in the daily activities.Except maybe occasionally, for a miracle here and there 😉And obviously, you’re an atheist so you’d be ready to argue =DFire away.

Irrespective of who I am, if I fire away too much, I’d be extinguished. 😦

On a serious note, yes, I do find it unfortunate to see people believe in God, but I don’t argue with just about anyone. I try to gauge first how much have they thought on the issue, firstly. And since this is an emotionally sensitive issue for the most, I don’t broach it much in at least face-to-face conversations.

Likewise, even online, I don’t put up a point against God’s existence unless and until someone puts up a point in favor of God’s existence first. 🙂

If you feel you’re emotionally prepared for answers to this question, I’d recommend your reading the book–‘The Necessity of Atheism’. The link to the book is in the sidebar of my blog under the heading ‘influences’, and you can download it free and legally, and read it on your PC as well as cell phone. It can take anywhere between 8 to 12 hours for you to read depending upon your reading speed and how much time you spend gasping. 😉 That’d give you a good idea of somewhat mature arguments against God’s existence, but more important will greatly improve your GK with regard to mankind, historical events, human psychology, etc. Remember, I’d turned atheist sometime in my 12th class, long before reading the above book. Just that the above book was extremely impressive for the way it was written.

@Truth and Lies: How many cheap-Chinese-made-remotes-meant-to-control-the-affairs-of-the-world have you used? Also it’s not good manners to suggest you’re as good as SG. 😉

@Alpez: I take that as a compliment. Thanks!

@deluded: Then, you can rest assure you’ll not win that lottery. But if you don’t buy a lottery ticket, hurricane Hillary might bring the winning one to you. You know they call it something; windfall, maybe.

Nice one. I think getting the first rank is in the hands of SK and to some more extant, his classmates. But what SK doesn’t realize is – the fun of getting the last rank, just pass 😉 Maybe God was trying to show it to them in a wise way, but some people just don’t listen 🙂 !!

@Deepali: LOL@ Chinese domination of the world. Look around carefully, and you might find cheap, durable Indian-made imitations of Chinese products, but that would be tad more difficult than finding God. 😉

I’m not sure what part of Destination Infinity’s comment was in a lighter vein, and what meant in earnest, so can’t speak for him. That’s something for him to clarify.

If you don’t mind my responding to the issue you raise, then, of course, there are factors beyond a typical SK’s control–illness, distractions, mood of the examines while assessing SK’s answers, the degree to which examines likes SK’s handwriting; likewise, same factors would govern other competitors’ performance. Individually, all these factors could be determinate, but how much influence they exert when acting in concert, can’t be determined accurately enough, and much less, controlled effectively. So yes, there indeed are factors outside of agency of pure human effort. This, I say from personal experience as well as observation.

@Ambi: The major part of the influence to get the first rank is with the student anyway. But there are other factors like genes, interest in the subject, laziness, cricket season (this might work either way), philosophical reasons etc!! 🙂 But I really can’t tell you certainly as I never got the first rank except in UKG!

@Ketan: That Hurricane Hillary part was very interesting. Do you believe in the theory of randomness – that everything happens in a random way, and we are all here because of pure chance? Just wanted to know your opinion on this.

Well, speaking of luck, for instance, mood of the examines plays a big role. It can make a difference of more than 5%, and in today’s times of competition, that is no small difference!

Regarding your question, on randomness determining ‘everything’–there are two ways of looking at.

If one wants to predict every prospective event in the Universe, then definitely we will not be able to do it because of certain inviolable laws like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. One of the implications of the law is that position of and energy contained by any particle can never be predicted with complete accuracy. So that way, yes, everything is very random. If you are specifically asking in context of formation of the Earth from stellar dust, and origin of life, yes again, it is an accident. That’s easier for me to accept ‘cuz I’m an atheist, and I don’t think there’s an intelligent entity with human-like intention to have specifically effected our existence.

But if you’re speaking of practical gross events like launching of satellites, solar eclipses, etc., then there’s indeed an acceptable degree of predictability.

I would read the free will part (slightly later) and will comment on that too, as these are my favourite topics 🙂 But do read one post when you are free: Chaos Theory

So, if you see there, even chaos seems to have a pattern. Everything in this universe obeys certain laws – right from atomic particles to the heavenly bodies. I for one, cannot assume that all these laws were brought about (or programmed in to them) by some random activity. Having a theoretical God to explain the creation gives us a sense of contentment (only for philosophical reasons, as we don’t know the answers to a lot of things) but having Science to explore all these things and still coming to a conclusion that we are not able to find out much, is something that has been bothering me for long. We will continue this discussion in the post you mention about free-will, but I will come back later there.

@Rohith: Officially, welcome to the blog, and apologies for such a delayed response.

Thanks for your extremely generous comments. Actually, I was taken aback by the generosity of your comments, and was on the verge of responding sarcastically, doubting the sincerity behind them. But am glad and relieved, I did none of that and decided to check out your blog, first. 🙂

Sorry for even thinking of doing that and revealing it over here. Hope you didn’t mind that.

lolzzz…I have been buying only branded products, since ages dude and to be more specific, I buy only Indian products, kachhe se leke baniyan tak, saabun se leke shoes tak 🙂Secondly, BSNL gives you the stuff not we buy it = modem 🙂Lastly, I liked this post and Murphy’s Law still rocks 🙂

Well, it was Hurricane Hillary and not just Hillary. 😉 And Hurricane Hillary was doing the same thing on the East coast that Hurricane Katrina had done on the West(?) coast, i.e., wrecking havoc. Basically, the US suffered with Hurricane Hillary, only because SG’s Chinese made-remote wasn’t working properly, so instead of a tsunami a hurricane was unleashed, and that too hitting the unintended population! 😉

And this malfunction of SG’s remote explains so many of the World’s problems that otherwise don’t make sense. 🙂